I write about the things I love. Mostly.

Pizza and Movie Night

This is just a very quick little dinner post. It was one of those days when you invite a friend or friends for an impromptu dinner, “Sure! Come on over!” you insist into the phone. Then the panic sets in. What can I possibly serve these people? It’s a good thing I had an hour to run to the grocery store to get supplies. I thought it would be fun to make our own pizza.

I played a movie for entertainment while I prepare the pizza dough from scratch. I used a pizza dough recipe from Martha Stewart’s website.

INGREDIENTS

2 packets (1/4 ounce each) active dry yeast

2 tablespoons sugar

1/4 cup olive oil, plus more for bowl and brushing

2 teaspoons coarse salt

4 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled), plus more for work surface

DIRECTIONS

Pour 1 1/2 cups warm water into a large bowl; sprinkle with yeast and let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes.

Whisk sugar, oil, and salt into yeast mixture. Add flour and stir until a sticky dough forms. Transfer dough to an oiled bowl and brush top with oil. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and set aside in a warm, draft-free place until dough has doubled in bulk, about 1 hour. Turn out onto a lightly floured work surface and gently knead 1 or 2 times before using.

To freeze, you can wrap the dough in plastic and freeze it in a resealable freezer bag for up to 3 months. If you plan to use it in a recipe that calls for half a batch, divide it before freezing.

For our pizza sauce, I prepared some store-bought pesto and tomato garlic basil sauce. Our pizza toppings included some sweet sauteed onions, bacon strips, cherry tomatoes, spanish sardines and arugula. I also prepared mozzarella, cream cheese and cheddar. You can use whatever you want on your pizza.

We had fun kneading our pizza dough and creating our own pizza art.

After baking for 25 minutes, it was time to eat! There is simply nothing that quite matches homemade pizza that’s appealing to all of us – it’s infinitely flexible, incredibly cheap, fun to make, it gets everyone involved and IT’S pretty delicious.